5 Tips for Better Back-of-House Bar Recipes
How a little structure can make your prep program faster, cleaner, and more consistent.
Most bars don’t plan their back-of-house recipes—they just evolve. One barback’s syrup becomes the next person’s “house standard,” and before long, no two batches taste the same. Every prep day becomes an improvisation act.
But with a little structure and planning, you can make your prep program faster, more consistent, and easier to teach. Whether it’s a simple syrup, a cordial, or a batched cocktail, building recipes with intention saves time, reduces waste, and keeps your drinks tasting the way they should—every single night.
Here are five practical tips for writing (and maintaining) better BOH recipes.
1. Use Metric for Easy Scaling and Conversions
If there’s one habit that instantly makes your prep life easier, it’s switching to metric.
Most purchased spirits already come in metric bottles—typically 750 mL or 1 L—so it makes sense to scale your prep recipes around those amounts. The math stays clean, the measurements stay consistent, and your recipes will be easier to scale up or down.
Converting to fluid ounces is where many bars go wrong. A 750 mL bottle equals ~25.36 fl oz, and basing your batches around that number guarantees confusion and leftover product. You’ll either end up with partial bottles or sticky shelves full of odds and ends.
Sticking with metric also helps when you’re working by weight, since for liquids with the same consistency as water (spirits, some liqueurs, wine, etc), 1 mL equals roughly 1 gram. It’s an easy, universal rule that keeps scaling simple and prevents errors when you’re juggling multiple preps at once.
2. Prepare Recipes by Weight (Not Volume)
Volume measurements might work for cocktails on the line, but for prep, weight wins every time.
When you measure by weight, your results stay consistent—even when your suppliers or ingredients change. Sugar granules vary in size from brand to brand, which affects how they pack into a measuring cup. Herbs, fruit, and other fresh produce can vary wildly in size and moisture content. Weight eliminates the guesswork and ensures that a 2:1 syrup or a basil cordial tastes the same no matter who makes it.
Invest in two good scales:
a heavy-duty scale (up to at least 10 pounds) for syrups, batches, and cordials
a micro-scale accurate to 0.01 grams for acids, salts, and fine adjustments
Weighing also keeps your station cleaner. You can portion ingredients directly into the batch container — no extra measuring cups to wash. Just double-check before you pour, because once it’s in the mix, there’s no taking it back out.
3. Optimize Recipes for Efficiency
Think about your BOH recipes like an engineer: build them to minimize steps, waste, and math.
A simple trick is to scale your recipes around whole bottles. For example, if your Negroni batch uses equal parts gin, Campari, and vermouth, just use one 750 mL bottle of each. You’ll end up with a clean 2.25 L batch — easy to measure, easy to cost, and zero leftovers.
For more complex recipes, find the smallest unit of measure in the cocktail and scale everything around it. Let’s use a Margarita as an example:
0.25 oz agave syrup
0.5 oz Cointreau
1 oz lime juice
2 oz tequila
Here, the smallest unit is 0.25 oz. To scale it up, we’ll call 0.25 fl oz = 375 mL — a convenient, easy-to-handle amount. Then, treat the rest of the ingredients as “parts” of that base:
Agave syrup = 1 part × 375 mL = 375 mL
Cointreau = 2 parts × 375 mL = 750 mL
Lime juice = 4 parts × 375 mL = 1.5 L
Tequila = 8 parts × 375 mL = 3 L
Now you’ve got a neat, scalable batch that uses full bottles, rounds cleanly, and makes ordering, par setting, and costing effortless.
For long-lasting batches like this, skip perishable ingredients (like lime juice) until the day of service. Add them fresh before shift — the rest of the batch (all spirit and sugar) will hold almost indefinitely with minimal alcohol loss.
4. Equip Your Team with the Right Tools
Good recipes only work when your team has the tools to execute them correctly. A few essentials go a long way in making prep consistent and repeatable:
Measured Pitchers – for accurate batching and clean transfers
Whisks – to dissolve sugar, blend syrups, and combining batched ingredients.
Cambros (various sizes) – ideal for mixing, storing, and stacking preps efficiently
Vitamix & Immersion Blenders – for emulsifying, pureeing, or blending cordials
Immersion Circulator & Vac Seal Bags – for precision infusions or temperature-controlled syrups
Heavy-Duty and Micro Scales – for accuracy, every time
Equipping your barbacks and bartenders properly is one of the easiest ways to raise the quality and consistency of your entire program. The right tools turn prep into a system instead of a guessing game.
5. Document and Standardize Every Recipe
Your prep recipes deserve the same respect as your cocktail specs.
Every syrup, cordial, batch, or juice should live in a consistent format — one that anyone on your team can understand and follow without supervision. At minimum, each recipe should include:
Ingredients (listed in metric, by weight)
Quantities and Yield (so staff know how much the batch makes)
Step-by-Step Instructions (short and clear)
Storage Guidelines (where and how long it keeps)
Labeling Guidelines (name, date, initials, and expiration)
Standardizing this information makes your prep program teachable, repeatable, and scalable. It removes ambiguity, speeds up onboarding, and reduces the number of “how do I make this again?” questions on prep day.
Whether you keep your recipes in a printed binder or a shared digital document, what matters is consistency. When every recipe looks the same and lives in the same format, your prep runs smoother, your product quality stabilizes, and waste drops to near zero.
Closing Thought
A well-run bar isn’t just about great drinks — it’s about systems that make great drinks possible, night after night. Standardizing your back-of-house recipes means less confusion, less waste, and more time to focus on service.
Write it once, write it clearly, and make it easy for your team to execute. That’s the real secret to running a consistent bar.
